Connexion

"Our company is growing very quickly, and Salesforce is the perfect solution to keep things simple while also letting us scale exponentially."

Tasso Koutsovasilis,New Customer Sales

Connexion is flexing its muscles in more than the car industry with Salesforce

Connexion is growing fast thanks to a savvy business model and the Internet of Things. To manage this growth, Connexion sought a reliable technology platform with a rock-solid customer support tool to help the growing – and very varied – base of Flex users.

When Connexion started, it was selling an internet radio streaming product called miRoamer direct to car manufacturers. Connexion was part of the global automotive supply chain, and customers included the likes of Volkswagen and General Motors. It was a very narrow playing field.

This all changed two years ago when a new product was brought on board. Flex is a smart car technology that tracks – in real-time – a car’s key performance indicators like its GPS location, engine performance, driver behaviour, fuel consumption and more. It is proving very popular in the fleet management industry and at auto dealerships, as it helps to increase a car’s productivity, safety and performance.

Since Flex has been introduced, Connexion’s customer base has expanded significantly. The company is now selling via three channels – its original car manufacturer customers like General Motors, vehicle service providers such as fleet cards, and the direct Flex channel. Sales complexity has grown exponentially.

In choosing a solution, Connexion paid close attention to prospective platforms’ ability to communicate with other technology solutions. “We chose Salesforce because we knew that, from an API perspective, it could communicate with our customers’ platforms and systems easily,” explained Tasso Koutsovasilis, New Customer Sales, Connexion.

Salesforce Sales Cloud is being used as a pipeline management tool to streamline the complex sales process. It is proving ideal for managing the long-lead sales cycle typical in the auto industry. To further support this, Connexion is using Salesforce Pardot to get marketing messages out to existing and potential customers quickly and effectively.This includes communicating insights that benefit their existing and potential customers.

It is important that Connexion customers can white-label the Flex service with their own branding. For example, if General Motors has the system installed in its vehicles, it looks like a General Motors solution. So it’s important that customer support is branded, too.

Connexion chose Desk.com to handle the customer support side of the business and to enable this multi-branded support service. “Desk.com has signficantly reduced the development cost in putting a support site on customer-facing websites. When a General Motors customer needs help with Flex, they access all of our customer support tools like help files, FAQs or chat via Desk.com, on the customer branded website. We can even set up multi-branded support sites – all using the same support system,” said Koutsovasilis.

Desk.com gives Connexion the insights needed to improve its support team, build better products, and make smart business decisions. Given that the system has the potential to be used by over 4,000 dealers in North America alone, this streamlined, centralised system for managing customer support has proven invaluable.

“Because we work with channels, we constantly need to communicate metrics like service response times, severity, type of case, and continuous improvement scores. Desk.com gives us operational clarity, and a defined process for how to handle things,” Koutsovasilis said.

Connexion has maintained a stellar track record for customer support with Desk.com. First point of contact with Flex users is always within 24 hours of the enquiry, and cases are typically resolved within two to three days.

“With growth planned through the US and beyond, Salesforce will undoubtedly help us increase market penetration with both car makers and non-car maker channels. It is now an invaluable part of our business.”